ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I'm finding it truly frustrating, to the point of losing interest in the game, that the random rares at all difficulties are the hardest fights in the game. It's bizarre that they're harder than the bosses (which is largely true); the game is designed around auto-explore, so avoiding them is very difficult; and the rewards for dealing with them stink. I'd also wager that they cost DG many, many players who are turned off by out-of-the-blue deaths .

Having won the game a bunch of times, my main interests are weaker classes and higher difficulties. I've been out of playing for about a year - is there some intentional design change that made them much more lethal than they were in the past?

I find the rares/randuniques/randbosses to be what makes Insane fun. Sure they can kill you pretty easily, but you can usually prepare for them. And autoexplore is not at fault, usually your choice of gear is what'll kill you. You totally can wear a robe and skimp on defensive gear, if you're okay using Track or Arcane Eye all the time. I completely ignored defensive items won three times using robes in patch 1.1, as Marauder, Corruptor, and Archmage (I love Black Robe). Here's a Archmage link to my Archmage winner who has 632 max life and THREE armor. But the tradeoff for autoexplore is you have to use tank items instead. If you do, rares won't be killing you in one turn unless you have exceptionally bad luck.

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My wiki page, which contains a guide and resource compilation and class tier list.

There haven't been any changes to rares lately, so unless you are getting killed by steamtech rares in the vanilla campaign, I guess you are just out of practise?

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My feedback meter decays into coding. Give me feedback and I make mods.

It's certainly possible that I'm simply rusty. But I've been having an awful lot of one-to-two round deaths with Ok classes (rogue, anorithil) - no deaths to anything but random rares, frequently in pairs. I did a run without rares (except for chests) and steamrollered through everything to dreadfall. Was there a recent change that mobs could use gear? Might be relevant.

Mobs can now activate items, but I wouldn't expect that to be a huge issue.
On the plus side, there are no longer Skirmisher rares inexplicably paralysing you.

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My feedback meter decays into coding. Give me feedback and I make mods.

It seems to work like that in tome in general. You wade through seas of trivial monsters, then a randboss suddenly lolkills you. Nature of the game, I'm afraid.

Easy fix. Play on madness and face a few randbosses and hordes of rare mobs on each level

But even when you learn all basic tricks to handle them from time to time you will face a particular combination of race and classes that is way above typical randboss. If you don't have 100% accurate detection it will be probably some nasty temporal stalker. When you focus on stuns or effects in general it will be nightmare horror etc

This thread is the reason I decided to give Insane a shot. I pulled a win on my first go.

To be honest, I don't think Insane is hugely more difficult than Nightmare is. The randarts come flowing in great numbers, and any class which relies on equip will get significantly stronger than a NM player is used to. But I've only done one run, so my experience is limited.

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Pronounced try-bull, not tree-bell

Rogue on insane is very difficult. I autoexplore on insane but I also evacuate when certain rares appear. Summoned monsters are deadly so noble belts are really important imo. And you must get good invisibility see through and both light radius, except for rogue of course.

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MADNESS rocks

This is one of the most informative parts of the guide to me. Could you elaborate further on the use of these items? I am definitely not using many of them enough. For example, up until now I used to toss items with wards into the transmogrifyer, without having a clue what they're good for.

About the races, I agree that the ones you mentioned (thalore, shalore, ogre) are usually best in terms of endgame power. However, I think Cornac deserves a mentions because they are great in the early game. Starting with an extra inscription is usually more of a help than racials, to help you survive up until, say, the tower. So perhaps certain classes (that have a very strong endgame) might prefer cornac, sacrificing some late game power in return for better early game survival?

Wards are amazing, using the Ward talent gives you a number of "Wards" of a damage type, which act like Bone Shield charges. This means if you know an tough enemy does a lot of damage of a specific type, you can block many of its hits. I find physical Wards to be the most important because its so common. I had someone ask me in chat once something like "What if the enemy uses Flurry or similar and takes down most of your Wards in one turn?" Well then you blew your Ward cooldown for a Flurry cooldown, which is a decent trade, and that's one of the worst cases. Other excellent ward types are fire, mind, and blight, though most are pretty good except for arcane.

Disperse Magic deactivates sustains like Burning Wake, Bone Shield, and Necrotic Aura. Stone Wall gives some breathing room to heal and wait out cooldowns, like Temporal Reprieve. Instant digging actives let you set up favorable terrain mid-combat, though I prefer to do this ahead of time or not at all so I personally do not use them, but they still deserve a mention.

So Cornac and Doomelf are also really good races, but they aren't ones I pick so I have very little to say about them (I don't even have Doomelf unlocked because I refuse to do the Dark Crypt). They're probably worth considering but I can't really say anything meaningful about them. For what it's worth I don't value Inscription slots very highly early since at most you want something like Regeneration/Shielding, Movement, and Wild/Phase Door. Only times I wish I had more is when Last Hope sells a good Heroism, which isn't very often.

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My wiki page, which contains a guide and resource compilation and class tier list.

Well I finally achieved my first couple of deaths in Insane mode, nice to know what the fuss is all about.

First impression: Insane mode reminds me of a famous quote from the battle of Stalingrad: "We have captured the kitchen, but we're still fighting for the living room and the bedroom."

But yes, I have to say that the difference between white monsters and rares is really extreme. That's already true in normal mode and nightmare, but in Insane it just gets weird. It is like the rares are the only real monsters you're fighting, and the whites are just irrelevant little chunks of free experience.

By the way it really made me laugh when I read this message in some of the tier one dungeons: "this zone is so easy for you that you can stroll to the bottom". Uh huh.

A really important race option in insane is dwarf, because of the assistance you get to level up and the extra 3 bosses (if you include backup guardian ). It also has decent HP.

Sometimes I don't even use any dwarven racial talents.

So for insane bulwark, archer, rogue, etc, dwarf can be very advantageous start. I like this class for insane, and cornac, as the extra inscription point is very valuable, as is the fast levelling (I've also gotten yeeks pretty far). So exp penality makes a big difference for early game survivability, which matters a lot if you play roguelike like I do.

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MADNESS rocks

If you want the extra experience just go Cornac or Yeek for lower experience penalty, then you get both fast levels and the benefit of not being a weak race. I find experience to be nearly entirely irrelevant, since most characters stop getting much stronger past level 42. One of the easiest parts of Insane from my experience is everything between Briagh's Lair and High Peak so as long as you hit level 50 by High Peak you should be fine.

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My wiki page, which contains a guide and resource compilation and class tier list.

With experience, this can often help.
http://te4.org/wiki/Zone

Notice that lumberjack village has a minimum level of 8, that's where I go in insane for an unfair advantage in exp at level 1. Some poor rare villager will do the work for you, and you can even come back and kill him in a few levels.

The second little trick is probably considered cheating, but I do it anyway because it's undetectable from the vault site . On character creation you can see where all your escorts will spawn if you check the log file. I will restart a char before I even start if its bad.

Someone mentioned rogue above, one of my favourite classes. Definitely aim to use heavy or massive armour later on. Stealth is worthless.